The Imaginary Marriage eBook

“Thank God!” Lady Linden looked at the
girl severely. “I suppose you will be the
next invalid—­women of your type always overdo
it. How many nights is it since you had your
clothes off?”

“That does not matter now.”

“By rights you should go to bed at once.”

“Aunt, I shall not leave him.”

Lady Linden sniffed. “Very well; I can
do nothing with you.”

“Defiant!” she thought to herself.
“She is getting character, that girl, after
all, and about time. Well, it doesn’t matter,
now that Tom will live.”

Lady Linden went downstairs. “Obstinate
and defiant, new role—­very well, I am content.
She is developing character, and that is a great thing.”

He was going to live. It was more than hope now,
it was certainty, after days, even weeks of anxiety,
of watching and waiting; and this bright morning Lady
Linden felt and looked ten years younger as she stepped
out into the garden to bully her hirelings.

Jordan, her ladyship’s coachman, was sunning
himself at the stable door. He took his pipe
out hurriedly and hid it behind his back.

“Jordan,” said Lady Linden, “you
are an old man.”

“Not so wonderful old, my lady.”

“You have lived all your life with horses.”

“With ’osses mainly, my lady.”

“How long would it take you, Jordan, to learn
to drive a motor car?”

“Me?” He gasped at her in sheer astonishment.

“Jordan, we are both old, but we must move with
the times. Horses are dangerous brutes.
I have taken a dislike to them. I shall never
sit behind another unless it is in a hearse—­and
then I shan’t sit. Jordan, you shall learn
to drive a car.”

“Shall I?” thought Jordan as her ladyship
turned away. “We’ll see about that.”

Again Tom opened his eyes, and he saw that face above
him, and even as he looked the head was bent lower
and lower till once again the red lips touched his
own.

“Marjorie, is it only pity?” he whispered.

But she shook her head. “It is love, all
my love—­I know now. It is all ended.
I know the truth. Oh, Tom, it—­it was
you all the time, and after all it was only you!”

CHAPTER XLVI

“—­Shehasgiven!”

Never so slowly as to-day had John Everard driven
the six and a half miles that divided Buddesby and
Little Langbourne from Starden. Never had his
frank and open and cheerful face been so clouded and
overcast. Many worries, many doubts and fears
and uncertainties, were at work in John Everard’s
mind.

No doubts and uncertainties of anyone but of himself.
It was himself—­his own feelings, his own
belief in himself, his own belief in his love that
he was doubting. So he drove very slowly the six
and a half miles to Starden, because he had many questions
to ask of himself, questions to which answers did
not come readily.